European equities slip

12:45 20.11.2018

On Tuesday, European equities went down, with financial institutions weighing a lot on fears about decelerating economic surge, Italy’s budget, receding earnings momentum, to say nothing of a lower probability of rate lifts in the EU in 2019.

The STOXX 600 headed south by 0.7%, slumping to a three-week minimum. Germany's DAX lost nearly 1.2%, while the FTSE 100 declined by 0.5% in Great Britain.

Although EU equities have considerably lagged American ones in 2018 and valuations have dived, traders told that it was too early for the EU to be an attractive value play.

The EU’s bank stocks index SX7P headed south by 1.8%, set for its worst dive for five weeks. Italian lenders FTIT8300 lost about 2.5%.

As for Italian government bond gains, they leapt due to the fact market participants fled its sovereign debt once again with Italy demonstrating no signs of backing down in a budget conflict with the European Commission.

Unicredit, Mediobanca, UBI Banca, Banco BPM inched down by 2.5%-5%.

Deutsche Bank slumped by nearly 4.4% hitting a record minimum of 8.195.

Dismal earnings also affected the bank sector.

Swiss bank as well as wealth manager Julius Baer went down by 5.4% after it told it was reducing spending under adverse market conditions, stressing it might not meet its cost-income objective this year.

The sector SX8P headed south by 2% reaching its lowest value since the end of February. STMicroelectronics equities dived by 3%, while Infineon decreased by 3% too. As for AMS, it inched down by nearly 3% as well.